


Operating Instructions

by cosmogyral



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-15
Updated: 2007-12-15
Packaged: 2018-01-25 01:25:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1624235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmogyral/pseuds/cosmogyral
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not every job is easy. (Bond/OMC, Bond/M)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Operating Instructions

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Sares (pushingmetaphor @ lj), Heidi (deutscheami @ lj), and especially to my beta Aria (ariastar @ lj), all of who put up with my whining and flailing for weeks while I agonized over how to write this fic and do everybody justice. If it's any good at all, the credit goes to their patient help.
> 
> Written for Kumquat Weekend

 

 

"Sending me out again? How nice of you. Do I get to take off the training wheels?"

He's standing at attention in M's throne room, suntanned and white-toothed and fresh from a Brazilian job. An American partner this time who never once took off his sunglasses. James gets the point.

"It's fantastically dangerous," she says, handing over the dossier. "I'm sure you're pleased."

"Of course I am. I've been looking forward to something difficult."

"I never said there was anything difficult about it," she murmurs, "only dangerous. Don't confuse the two."

He laughs. "Who's the bastard this time?"

"Bitch, in fact," she says. "I hope you don't mind."

Her name is Susanna Voigt, and she's a gunrunner. There's nothing particularly complex about her motivations, except that she's funding genocide, and even then the British government probably wouldn't particularly mind except that she's also funding one of the more vexing terrorist threats of the day. Her mother is Swiss-French, father's Swiss-German, money from the family, headquarters out of Lithuania, Zurich, and Rwanda. They send him to Zurich first. It has better restaurants.

He takes the alias Alec Jaspers, a mad Scotsman looking to get even using his little organisation, and is assigned a couple of angry assistants who grumble even when they're not in public. He dislikes them and ignores them, especially Kreiner, who's morose and silent and believes the whole mission will go horribly wrong; Stirling at least has a bit of charm.

They stay in ostentatious hotels and he grows a beard that terrifies the bellboys. His organization does not keep in touch, M does not keep in touch, and he finds this all very well and good until the second week of groundwork, at which point he becomes abruptly so bored that he goes out and gets into a fight with a diplomatic consul. "A nice touch of character," Stirling calls it, eyes wide in admiration, and James does not show his surprise.

He writes a note about the weather in lurid red ink and folds it over four times; then he tells Kreiner that it's a message of grave importance and watches the man unhurriedly get the job done. M's hallucinatory face staves off further destructive boredom. That look of calculated annoyance she will wear when she receives it, the recognition of the handwriting. He imagines surprise, but he wouldn't stake money on it.

The reply comes in a text message from a withheld number. It reads: _go do your job._

* * *

"This will have to go to the boss," the suit says, and James says, "Yes, all right, but make it quick. I've not got all day."

The voice comes from behind him. Female, definitely, but not falsely seductive; it is pleasant, quiet, unaccented. "You will take as much as time as I require."

"Mrs. Voigt," he says, turning, and she matches the voice: black hair curling under her chin, even tan, business suit, beautiful but unattractive. For a moment he remembers another woman on a train.

"I am notoriously single, Mr. Jaspers," she says, extending a gloved hand. "The joke falls a little flat."

"Alec," he says, making his voice rough. "It's never a good idea to assume things with beautiful women."

She smiles, says, "That is, I think, enough. Will we discuss business?"

"Will we?" he says, pulling himself a chair. "Are you always so direct?"

"When a single man comes claiming his country's independence? Yes." She steeples her fingers. "Can you pay?"

He'd thought to draw her in, from the photos, but now that he's seen her he's not interested. A different kind of seduction, maybe. "Not in cash," he says. "Cash can be faked."

A flicker of interest. "What in, Mr. Jaspers?"

"In diamonds," he says, and smiles.

Their negotiations are conducted over a series of hushed dinner parties, where she serves him delicacies he pretends not to recognize and her assistants ignore his vague advances. He can't have her, he won't bother with them, and she's too smart to get caught in the midst of this deal without very good reason, but he's beginning to see the illuminated edges of the plan when he meets the accountant.

Theodore Lehmann wears pince-nez even though he doesn't need to, has started balding though he's thirty, and smiles all the time, but nevertheless he's her cousin on her mother's side and has the French habit of being casually attractive. He has the added charm of responsibility for nearly all of Susanna Voigt's money.

"Oh, I can't," he tells James, the first time James asks him out for a drink. "Susanna would have my head _and_ yours."

"Well, I'd rather like yours," James suggests, and Lehman turns pink to the tip of his ears.

A note from M arrives in the fourth week, under the room service tray. Decoded it reads: _Alec Jaspers is not the cultured type._ He sends no response.

That night, as every night, a couple of marks try to follow him home. It's a damned relief to take care of them. He leaves his cigarette ground into the first man's chest, a messy burn, and the second man loses a ragged piece of an ear.

"Take a piece of advice," he tells them, kicking the first in the side to make sure they won't be getting up. "This is not customer satisfaction."

After that there are no more followers.

* * *

Theodore Lehmann doesn't talk in restaurants. Or rather Theodore Lehmann talks about theatre and opera and symphonic recordings of good music, gently educating Alec Jaspers on the finer life, while James dutifully sends back psychological profiles, but he doesn't talk about the money and he doesn't talk about Susanna except for the most innocuous, imagined of childhood stories. James ignores these entirely -- they were in her dossier -- and when he next makes his report he tells M about Susanna's childhood fighting tigers on the plains of Kenya, where she wrote epic Homeric poetry and was daddy's little girl. He adds that she does, apparently, have a fetish for strong men, but moreso for ones with breasts, and suggests that M take over this damn mission for herself.

She could, he murmurs to himself while checking the report for spelling errors. It's not fucking difficult at all.

She responds: _there are no tigers in Kenya._

 _Stirling_ talks after a few drinks and a hand on his knee, all about M's bloody inability to promote the deserving and her fascination with extremely young men, but only once, and how it's bloody unfair that you can't sleep your way up through the ranks if you aren't a ladies' man, if you know what I mean, not that you've ever had that problem.

James nods and doesn't smile and pats him on the top of the head until Stirling growls and turns to him, grabbing him by his lapels, and then James begins to ask real questions.

The next morning he sends M a neat, handwritten note in the mail. _Loose lips sink ships. But they do give fantastic service on the way down._

* * *

The guerilla campaign for Lehman's well-pressed trousers culminates in a fight about treachery, about whether Scotland is beholden to England, and James gives Lehman the speech about true loyalty and the meaning of love and the meaning of trust and laughs to himself for half an hour in the car while Lehman is out looking for him. Then he pours some water over his head and shows up outside Lehman's flat in the rain.

Theodore Lehmann doesn't talk in bed, either. But in the morning he says, carefully, "I think I may be able to get you a better deal."

"This isn't about that," James says, crossing his arms. "I don't want your money, boy."

"I know you don't," Lehman hastens to assure him, "but it would mean a lot to me if you would-- I don't think--" He stops and his hands tighten on the counter of his kitchen. "I've been thinking about the different kinds of blood money. I've been thinking about degrees of treachery. I feel--"

"--you should know," James says, taking Lehman's hand and running a finger down the middle of his palm. "I'm not a Scotsman."

"Well, I did know that," Lehman murmurs. "You've got a different accent in the middle of the night."

"Teddy," James says, meeting his eyes, "I'm an agent of MI-5 and if you want, for a price, we can get you out."

"Yes," Lehman says. "I want. Susanna can go," his voice squeaking, "screw herself."

"Well," says James, "good," says James, and for a moment would write off the entire female sex for a weekend with the Guy Burgess of the Swiss Alps.

* * *

Printed on microfilm and handed off to her secretary: _I think I'll keep the beard._

Nestled under his noon coffee: _it looks like a feral animal._

With his final report: _you do know I've won?_

* * *

Then three days later he wakes up to Stirling trussed like a dog at the foot of his bed and a gun cool in the hollow of his forehead. He gets up as directed, points out that he's not dressed, and is treated to an appreciative glance that isn't supposed to look appreciative. He slips on trousers, making sure to keep his hands in the open at all times, and says, "I was rather impressed by your efficiency, you know."

"I know," Kreiner says, and motions him out the door.

There are many men waiting in the hall-- maybe Voigt owns the hotel-- and he is carefully handed down floor by floor to the basement, while as he passes the lobby a van screeches away into the night. He makes some comment about the elegance of the misdirection and is ignored. He makes a comment on the homoeroticism of the whole experience and is ignored more pointedly.

Tied to a chair with respect and knocked unconscious with precision.

When he wakes up Voigt is sitting across from him, her legs crossed, wearing practical clothes that will wash. She is not watching him. She is reading a note.

"Professionalism," she says, folding it over into an origami square. "It's a virtue, don't you think?"

Later she asks him, "What did he tell you?"

"Who?" he says, and coughs up a tooth.

* * *

"What you should know," she tells him, "is that I've done my research on you. It's a good business practice."

He spits blood onto the floor and names capitals backwards in his head. It is good business practice, but the only person she could have analyzed is 007, and that won't get her anywhere at all.

She says, "What you should know is that I now know you rather better than you know yourself, Mr. Jaspers Bond."

All of them say that, and none of them ever hit home, useless toy villains, and he can't be hurt anymore; as though MI-5 hasn't done this to him, as though he hasn't been kept in cages and black boxes and underwater and mid-air until there is nothing but _nothing_ that can cause him harm, and long ago he lost the ability to care about a bloody fucking _hammer._

She lowers herself onto his lap, and tells him, "I know that you like to lose."

There is a silence in the room.

"You're formidable," James says, "but you're not _that_ attractive."

"I didn't say to me," she murmurs. "I said you like to lose, Mr. Bond. Not to give up, but to be beaten. That's why you struggle so hard to find the dangerous jobs, isn't it? Because you know that one day you'll be taken down. Very Spartan of you, Mr. Bond. Very ancient. Very stupid." She presses her nails into his cheek and says, "I will give you one chance."

"I won't," he says, and brings up his wrists worked free of the rope and slams them together over the top of her head.

* * *

Kreiner is shot in the morning. Sterling is quietly disposed of the following noon.

* * *

"I don't know what to call this," M says, holding out Bond's last note. Always neat, M. Always clean. Also always in a hurry, even when standing perfectly still like this, staring him down.

He takes it. "You could call it the truth."

"I ask you if you think she's right and you tell me that you like to win." M snorts. "It might be the truth, but it doesn't answer the question."

"Obviously."

"Then I'll ask you an easier one." She folds her fingers. "What's your final summation?"

He thinks about this. "An obvious success," he says. "No one died, all goals achieved, and a mole in the agency uncovered."

She sighs and gives him a longer look. Finally she says, "Your psychological profile has always worried the upper echelons, I'm sure you know."

"If it doesn't, I'm not doing my job," he murmurs; a grin.

"It's because of your damnable tendency to misestimate your own capabilities," M explains. "Other agents leave when the waters get too deep for them. _You_ piss in the water to attract the sharks."

"May I go?" he asks, gesturing towards the door, and she says, "your final report. One more chance."

"A success," he says again, his smile white-toothed and broad. "We all got what we wanted."

She slaps him hard across the face.

He catches her wrist but only after the fact, mouth twisting, and she says, "If you lie to me again, James, I'll have you liquidated. _What is your assessment?_ "

After a long while, he says, "You were wrong. It was difficult."

"Thank you," she says. She tugs her wrist free. "That will be all."

He says, without stepping back, "Your profile had some interesting tidbits as well. It calls you passive-aggressive, aggressive-aggresive, Type A, obsessive but _not_ compulsive, and prone to violence. It also says that you are competitive to a fault."

She glances down. "I know," she says, taking the note back from him, neatly, cleanly. "I wrote it. If you liked to _win_ , James, you'd have _my_ job. And you won't, not even after I've been replaced. It's too much like success for you."

"If that will be all," he says, and nearly turns to go before catching her eyes. Then things become inevitable.

* * *

M's laughter is rough. "Keep moving, Bond, that's a boy," she tells him, and he growls and dips his head down and it's unbearable the way she keeps laughing, so awful that when she gasps for breath and stops for just one second he comes hard enough to see stars.

In the aftermath, she writes instructions, absently, down his spine.

 


End file.
